As Sweden’s Internet anonymity fades, traffic plunges

A new Swedish law that went into effect yesterday makes it possible for …

Swedish Internet users love themselves some file-sharing—but not when their veil of anonymity can be stripped away.

The EU's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) requires all member states to adopt tougher protections against piracy and counterfeiting. Sweden's own implementation of the law went into effect on the first day of April and had an immediate effect; Internet traffic passing though the country's main exchange points fell nearly in half.

The main provision of Sweden's IPRED directive would not be specially controversial in the US; indeed, it's already the law here. Copyright holders who identify the IP address of someone sharing their material online can go to a court, which can force ISPs to turn over information about the subscriber using that IP address at the time in question. Should ISPs then choose to sue the person, they can do so.

The threat of unmasking appears to have slashed Internet traffic in Sweden. Netnod, which runs major Swedish Internet exchange points in Lule�, Sundsvall, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malm�, publishes data about the traffic passing through its facilities. Its graphs show that total traffic dropped from a peak of 190Gb/s on Tuesday, March 31 down to a peak of only 110Gb/s on Wednesday, when the new law went into effect.

Some declines were even more significant. Traffic at the Gothenburg site alone plummeted even further (as a percentage), dropping from 16Gb/s to 7Gb/s, and today's numbers appear to be even lower than yesterday's.

Of special note is the fact that traffic on March 31 was higher than the average at every site, suggesting a last-minute bingeing at the Internet's P2P buffet.

Will the effect last? Who knows. Some overall reduction seems likely, but it will probably be modest; countries where rightsholders can already unmask IP addresses certainly haven't managed to curtail files-sharing simply by threatening lawsuits. Even the RIAA's lawsuit campaign in the US failed to cut files-swapping substantially.

But the dramatic data will no doubt provide the impetus for rightsholders to push even harder for graduated response laws across the globe. One of the key points of such a campaign is stripping away the sense of anonymity; even in trials where the ISP passes along infringement notices but doesn't threaten disconnection, P2P usage has dropped. One UK study last year suggested that 70 percent of file-swappers would stop sharing copyrighted files after a simple notice that their activity had been detected.

Sweden's Internet number might well recover as the "novelty" of the new threat wears off and most Internet users remain unsued, but the data does seem to suggest that so long as people feel exposed, they will alter their behavior.

Of course, rather than stop sharing files—practically a national pastime in Sweden—Internet users may turn instead to services like The Pirate Bay's new "IPREDator" anonymous VPN.

Rightsholders are already putting the new law to use, as several book publishers have gone to court seeking information about the online sharing of their audiobooks.

13 Reader Comments

It'd be interesting to see how will this trend look like in the next months. Should this trend be confirmed the decreased amount of traffic would cut off the country-related advertising revenues. One industry gains at the expenses of another one. Sharing copyright protected products is illegal, no doubt on it. However I would be interested in reading some serious research of the downside social and economic effect of this witch hunting strategy. I suspect there is a better paretian way to allocate the resources for increased benefits either for the copyright holders or for the people and society in general.

Being on a 100mbps line like I am with no bandwidth caps makes no sense at all if all I am doing is reading my email and visiting news sites like these or chatting with my kids abroad.

While i wont admit that I do any kind of seeding due to the FRA law and the new IPRED april fools law... I do have an average of 10-20gigs being transferred on my line... per day, so Beatrice Ask and the scum she hangs around with can just kiss my behind.

While I have moved off thepiratebay my transfers are about the same because its now mostly on private sites, which is were everyone is heading if they are not going in for VPN services like http://mullvad.net/ (use google's translate to get a general idea - full disclosure: i have NO connection to that site).

I say give this 2 weeks before the numbers come up again with a bit of a bigger spike coz now a lot will be encrypted adding to the traffic.

While our corrupt and clueless politicians in Sweden dont have a clue, we are not French.. we wont give up without a fight or just bend over and hope it does not hurt much.

Remember, we are the origins of thepiratebay... so to all the antipiracy morons out there, suck my Swedish meatballs!

Originally posted by TheOneElectronic:It'd be interesting to see how will this trend look like in the next months. Should this trend be confirmed the decreased amount of traffic would cut off the country-related advertising revenues. One industry gains at the expenses of another one. Sharing copyright protected products is illegal, no doubt on it. However I would be interested in reading some serious research of the downside social and economic effect of this witch hunting strategy. I suspect there is a better paretian way to allocate the resources for increased benefits either for the copyright holders or for the people and society in general.

The research shows that thet society is better of sharing than blocking everything. But media companies how ever small do have huge loby and can push through almost anything. But sooner or later the whole idea of copyright is going to get in to the public debate and than it will be game over for sucking out artists and public for mad profits.

@AxMi-24: I agree. The sooner they'd understand this the better for them also. Without involving any hatred (which I despise) they better think over the fact that no one can revert history. I suspect a face to face fight would probably have two effects: cutting the file sharing dramatically (average people would simply stay away fearing their life and family welfare isn't worth P2P habit) and cutting off the witch hunters purse in the long run. Sharing means also sharing knowledge and the more people are aware of that show, or that artist, the higher is the advertising space price for the show or the artist's cache. Given the technology we have nowadays I can't possibly believe they can't find a way to keep the industry florid without being stuck in business models belonging to the eighties!

Does the Conficker scare coinciding with this affect the interpretation of the graphs at all?

Most likely not. I think only a small tech-interested minority even knows about the Conficker around here, whereas everyone owning a computer knows and fears IPRED. The graph pretty much sums up my own use during these days.

Just gonna wait it out a few weeks myself and see what happens, but it will probably not generate much of a difference, just like in the US. A few unlucky souls will be targeted and demanded to pay outrageous sums. I'm not even sure it's gonna go that far. Didn't the entertainment organizations promise to stop prosecuting citizens, or was that just in USA?

Anyhow, the entertainment industry is fighting a battle they can't win. The P2P technology is here to stay until something better and more effective is introduced.

Originally posted by TheOneElectronic:@AxMi-24: I agree. The sooner they'd understand this the better for them also. Without involving any hatred (which I despise) they better think over the fact that no one can revert history. I suspect a face to face fight would probably have two effects: cutting the file sharing dramatically (average people would simply stay away fearing their life and family welfare isn't worth P2P habit) and cutting off the witch hunters purse in the long run. Sharing means also sharing knowledge and the more people are aware of that show, or that artist, the higher is the advertising space price for the show or the artist's cache. Given the technology we have nowadays I can't possibly believe they can't find a way to keep the industry florid without being stuck in business models belonging to the eighties!

The thing is probably that they will have to get used to a lot less profit and it's obvious that they don't want that. But even public will sooner or later realise that thye are being screwed (of course media industry has nothing on biomed one but it's a start).

Sadly a rich loby is always more powerful than poor and spread out oposition.

Over at Slashdot someone digged through the data and found that this only brought down the daily traffic to the same level as last october. I'm sure that IPRED has something to do with this, but since spring has finally sprung here I'm iobe that that simple fact may have as much to do with this as anything else.

The results are pretty dramatic.. and a clear illustration of the scope of the problem that piracy (I think we can safely say *most* - but certainly not all - of the drop can be attributed to transfers of pirated material) poses.